Undying Love - Brian Hesse (best non fiction books of all time txt) 📗

this up with these notes. It is dangerous work my friend, we will both die if caught.”

            Aleksander replied, as he stuffed the note in Aaron’s jacket pocket, “You will keep delivering the notes, and I will keep starving on half rations.” This statement had the desired effect. Aaron lowered his head to the ground heavy with guilt. However, not enough guilt to prevent him from receiving his payment for his services. Without another word, he walked away still gliding across the camp on the balls of his feet toward the sewing section of camp number one.

            Aleksander, feeling a jolt of joyful energy surge through his body, bringing much needed strength to shrinking muscles, returned to the task of installing the few final wooden planks that would complete the structure.

            “What do you think they will use this building for? He asked one of the workers by his side. He didn’t know the man’s name. His usual partner disappeared just two days ago without explanation. The SS guards never explained disappearances, and nobody would dare ask.

            The man turned to Aleksander and without saying a word made a frightening gesture. He ran his right index finger across his own throat, from left ear to right.

            “What do you mean? Asked Aleksander, smiling at the strange gesture, as if in disbelief or, denial.

            “You see the smoke from the far end of the camp, do you not my dimwitted friend.” The man pointed.

             Aleksander knew of the fires in that area burning day and night. He knew that the camp was a death camp in the sense that many people were worked to death. He knew of the executions and random acts of violence immediately upon arrival. He even warned Anastazja of this very fact when they were reunited. But wholesale slaughter? Mass executions and the burning of bodies? He still did not believe this could be possible. His world consisted of the immediate area which housed the male carpenters and brick layers of the camp. He never personally witnessed the gassings within the camp.

            “How do you know for sure?”

            The man replied, “I was a Sonderkommando just a few months ago at the White House on the other side of the camp. The place mirrored this one in every detail, accept of course it was white instead of red. They bring them in to the wooden changing room. The people strip naked and are then crammed into the concrete section. Gas pellets are dropped from the ceiling, releasing a deadly gas. I helped pull out the bodies and dragged the corpses to a large burning pit. We just threw them right into the fire to become the end product, a fine white floating ash.”

            Aleksander felt a wave of nausea rise within his stomach. If this man was not as insane as he looked, and if what he said is true, he must find a way out for him and his beloved. He felt like screaming at the top of his lungs that he wasn’t even a Jew. He was a Pole and not a target of extermination. This was a mistake. He didn’t belong here. But he could do no such thing. This revelation of the truth would be enough to get him killed on the spot. He was living in a world where truth is something perverse, something to be feared, something to be destroyed.

Letters of Love

  Anastazja lost all sense of time since her arrival at the death camp just seven months ago. From seven in the morning until seven at night she sits at her work bench feeling the occasional sting of the needle pierce her still soft hands. She daydreams as she works, as if her hands are on auto pilot, simply going through the motions stitch by stitch until the world around her becomes an endless blur. So many times, she thought of giving in to one of the many forms of death that surround her every waking moment within the camp. She thought to herself, I can attack one of the SS pigs and meet my end at the barrel of a gun. I can run into the electrified fence surrounding the camp, like so many prisoners have done before when life became too unbearable. She laughed to herself as she thought about sticking the long sewing needle into her jugular vein and bleeding all over the black SS uniforms piled in front of her frail body. Every once in a while, she would reach her hand down and touch her ribs, revolted at the feeling of bone pushing through thin malnourished flesh. Then she would brighten like the sun slowly shining its brilliant light across a dark grey horizon. She would brighten when she felt the half dozen letters smuggled to her by her only beacon of light in this endless sea of blood and death.

On March 23, 1942, she returned to her straw cot in the women’s barracks and read each letter

under the privacy of her torn dirtied bed sheet, a luxury many women in the barracks would gladly trade their soul.

My Dear Anastazja,

      I am sorry that I cannot arrange just now to see you in person. How many times I have thought of ending my existence. But I cannot as long as you are alive with me on this earth. You are my beacon of hope in a world that has cracked open to let the demons and fires of hell destroy all that was once held sacred and good. Only an insidious evil could separate two souls such as us. Soul mates from the beginning my Anastazja.

 

To a Soul Mate Yet Unknown

I have not met you yet,

But I know that you are there,

Struggling in this life’s regrets,

In this life’s sadness, we do share.

 

You stand upon a lonely shore,

Looking at a star,

I feel you are close to me,

But I know not yet how far.

 

So, I stand through rain and cold and heat,

Each and every star filled night,

Until that sun-filled day I run to you,

When I see you in my sight.

 

    Remember when I wrote this as a very young man?  Well I quickly realized when I was done that my soul mate was always right beside me. I kept this poem because it brought me to the realization of you, and I never turned back since. I love you darling. I will survive hell for just one more minute to feel your body close to mine once again.

 

Your Love,

Aleksander

 

Anastazja could not help but smile when reading the poem. How so like a man to not realize true love until it came up and smacked him in the head. But his slow wit in matters of the heart is what gave him his charm in her eyes. She quickly unfolded the last letter that he had smuggled to her. The camp would be under the mandatory lights out in just five minutes. Any infraction of this rule would be met by severe punishments such as withholding a day’s rations of food and water, and this sometimes meant a death sentence for the already malnourished prisoners.

 

My Darling,

It is with sadness I write this letter to you. The day of our arrival I warned you that this was a camp of death. I was so naïve in my calculations. I knew that only skilled workers would receive somewhat adequate rations and the rest would slowly starve to death, but I was naïve in my understanding of what this camps purpose really was. Just two days ago, we finished the wooden addition of what is called the Red House in the camp. This is nothing more than a long red brick structure that has been sealed tightly of any cracks, holes, or other avenues for escaping air. I thought this was to be another SS barracks. Curiously, at the time, I was tasked of drilling a hole in the roof, again, with a sealed metal trap door fastened to the hole. But one on a hinge and can easily be opened and closed.

  After the work was completed, us twelve workers were placed in formation and told that our job has changed. We were now called Sonderkommandos. We were told that the camp was overrun with typhus and dysentery and must be disinfected. I still did not want to believe what this monster meant, but deep down, somewhere in my unconscious mind, I knew it meant extermination. I hesitate to describe the next scenes to you my dear. I still sometimes forget how strong and independent of a woman you are. Traits that make you so much closer to my heart.

   Eight hundred sick and elderly prisoners were herded to the Red House. Many were too weak to walk on their own. Lines of the walking dead covered in sores, lice, and their own excrement were brought to our location. We, the Sonderkommando, were forced to reassure the people that everything was OK. They were just going for a warm shower as treatment for their sickness. Most were women, some carrying their babies and small children, but there were also men in the group. After taking off their clothes in the wooded addition, that I regretfully help to construct, the people were crammed into the sealed brick enclosure. An SS man poured Zyklon B pellets through the metal opening in the roof, the metal trap door I also installed. Within minutes you could hear the blood curdling screams of the people inside. It took at least fifteen minutes for the screaming to stop. We were then directed to march to the rear of the enclosure. Here, an SS guard opened a large sliding metal door to display the contents inside. They were all dead, some pink and some blue, but all dead, still standing upright with their dead children still firmly clutched in their arms. Eight of us were forced to pull the intertwined bodies apart and put on coal carts and wheelbarrows to be transported to the large pit of fire a few meters away. Here the bodies were thrown on the fire to erase any trace of their existence. The other four of us, sprayed water and a disinfectant inside the shower room to clear any blood and feces caked on the floor and walls. My dearest Anastazja, I fear that when the work here is done, the Sonderkommando will be the next to go through the gas chamber. They cannot possibly leave any witnesses alive.

    You must eat this letter when you are done. I am arranging for our escape. Attempts have been made but all have failed in the past, but together I am hopeful we will escape. You see, I am privy to much information. I hear that the Red House will cease operation in three weeks. A new gas chamber, one more sophisticated, is almost finished construction. In the meantime, those who died from the medical barracks are being loaded onto trucks and being brought outside to be piled for later cremation in the new gas ovens under construction. We only have three weeks to make this happen. We will hide under the dead bodies in the trucks, and once outside the gate, we will make our escape East toward the Russians. Our chances of survival are slim, but we must try my love. We must die in each other’s arms in freedom.

     Anastazja read the note with tears pooling in eyes she never thought could cry again. She thought of the children especially, desperately clinging to the only source of security and comfort they would ever know, only to be killed by the delusions of a madman in Berlin.

The Escape

Aleksander waited in the shadows for Aaron to pass his barracks, after the camp was in lights out mode. He knew the danger of being caught outside after the call for lights out was sounded, but it was Saturday night and the Nazi guards were busy getting drunk and planning their